Artist Malcom Tait

A lifelong interest in drawing and art led me to develop my aspirations through education, initial tutored efforts led to the production of a portfolio of work that allowed enrolment in a degree course in Fine Art (B. Sc.), at the University of Lincoln at the age of fifty. This was completed in 2006. In parallel with university study, I continued to develop independent ideas, curating exhibitions for other artists, mounting solo exhibitions and participating in joint exhibitions. I was selected for the final exhibition of the Mercury Music Prize student art prize at London’s Air Gallery in 2004, was winner of the Burden’s Open in the East Midlands in 2005, and since graduating have taken a production of the William Mastrasimone play ‘Extremities’ to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (2006) and exhibited at the Great art Fair, Alexandra Palace, (2006), all the time continuing to develop my practice and make work. In 2008 was winner of the South Holland Open Art Prize. Artist’s Statement: My work is informed by a desire to understand how we position ourselves in the ‘real’ world, how we understand what we become aware of through our senses, how we contextualise and understand space and how these perceptions influence our ideas about humanity. These influences inhabit to a large and diverse sphere and so my work is an eclectic mix, each new project informed by the ideas developed from research into “who we are and what it is to be”, and described using the most apposite aspect of my practice. To understand what we perceive through the senses we use language, without language there would be no education, without education we would understand little. Language allows us to record history, to record our traditions, and to be what we are. One of the primary forms of this recording and retelling is the narrative; fairytales and myths that describe and influence our cultural value systems. It is this arena of thinking and research that is influencing my current work a series of mixed-media paintings. Drawing plays an important roll in all my work and in this body of work, close examination reveals the initial drawing through the layered paint emphasising the complex aspect of language. As someone who grew up with a Meccano Set, construction and making has always been an integral part of my life, but as my art practice has developed I have been able to use this to examine ‘site’ and the relationship ‘being’ has to site, our perceptions of place and the continual changing of that perception as others enter and leave the sites we inhabit. Though the physical remains constant, the relationship is a continually evolving event as we move through the physical world. As one who lives in a rural community I have recently began to examining how or if this relationship differs between ‘natural’ landscapes or constructed ‘urban’ areas. These two main elements occupy separate strands only occasionally forming part of the same work, but each informs and influences the other. The painting element informed by language and narrative, the three dimensional by spatial concerns and site. Individually or in combination they give rise to my practice.